Woodsburner (33 page)

Eliot thinks carefully. “He is not the man I thought.”

“I see.” Dickerson lets the shovels slide to the ground; they stand upright on their handles, corralled by his arms. He looks at Eliot thoughtfully before making up his mind and pushing a shovel toward him. “Here. We'll need every man if we're to save Concord.”

Eliot accepts the shovel, though he does not think the situation so dire as Dickerson claims. “Is the town truly at risk?”

Dickerson points toward the center of the crowd, and Eliot puts on his spectacles to better see the man standing on a barrel, speaking to the gathering. His face and clothes are blackened with ash, and he is describing the fire in the woods with great sweeping motions of his arms, as if he were trying to take flight.

“The way he tells it,” Dickerson says, “we'll all be standing in ashes by nightfall if this wind does not abate. Nothing more than a few hundred acres of dry forest stands between Concord and the flames.”

“Does he know how it began?”

“Says it was an accident. That's Squire Hoar's son, Edward Sherman, a trustworthy fellow.”

More men arrive, and Edward Sherman Hoar continues to describe the height of the flames and the speed of their advance, but he offers no thoughts on how to combat it. A man in overalls at the front of the crowd nudges him from the barrel and climbs up in his stead. This man shouts in a commanding voice, suggests that the women and children of Concord, and anyone else incapable of swinging a shovel, should be sent out of the path of destruction.

“He's right,” Dickerson says to Eliot. “We ought to empty the town, before the fire does it for us.”

Eliot pictures the Concord Road jammed with horses and wagons, carts piled high with valuable belongings. “Surely it will not come to that.”

Dickerson swings his boiled head to indicate the homes along Main Street. “I reckon there are almost two thousand souls hereabouts,” he says, “and if the fire comes—the plague could do no worse.”

Eliot imagines the homes of Concord ablaze, pictures the Shakespeare Hotel collapsing under the heat and smoke; he thinks of his own impotent attempts at describing such a blaze in
The House of Many Windows
. And in that moment he can hardly believe this fortunate turn of events. It is no wonder that he has not been able to realize his vision for the play's final scene. The problem is suddenly clear to him. Eliot wants the audience to feel the heat of the fire, wants them to experience the dismay of his hero, Marcus DeMonte, but he cannot hope to describe what he has never experienced for himself.

While the men of Concord debate how best to attack the fire, Eliot envisions the scene from
The House of Many Windows
as it should appear onstage. In the foreground, DeMonte wrings his hands, frozen in agony. The entire set will be destroyed and rebuilt every night, a massive endeavor, but Moses Kimball has convinced him that the Boston Museum Theater has handled bigger spectacles than this. Eliot must simply finish the play He pictures DeMonte summoning courage to enter the burning house and rescue his infant son. He thinks he might allow DeMonte a soliloquy at the end as he stands before his ruined home, a poignant reflection on his unexpected freedom from material possessions. Eliot revises the title in his head:
The House of Many Windows; or The Second Chance
. Concord must be saved, he thinks, but there is valuable experience to be garnered first.

Eliot clutches the handle of the shovel from Dickerson's shop
and watches the men in the crowd argue over the best course of action.

“People need to be more careful with their blasted lucifers,” Otis Dickerson says. Eliot nods in agreement, and then quietly slips back through the crowd, taking the new shovel with him.

Just before Odd reaches the center of Concord, he sees a stranger approaching him with long, deliberate strides. In the presence of such men, Odd feels something shrink behind his rib cage. Even as he tells himself that they are no better, no more deserving than himself, he feels his breath diminish, as if to acknowledge that he has no claim to their air. The man before him looks like a wealthy merchant, with his bright yellow vest and the rectangular spectacles balanced on his nose. He carries a bright new shovel, cradling it in his arms as if he were unsure how to put it to use. Odd puts his head down and scuttles sideways, but the man is on him in an instant and their paths meet next to a narrow wooden watering trough. Odd studies the bottom of the empty trough, avoiding the man's stare.

“There is a conflagration in your forest,” the man tells him. He speaks loudly and punctuates his words with the handle of the shovel.

Odd sucks in a deep, undeserved breath. His tongue finds the little black tooth. His news is already old, his trip wasted. He smiles nervously and again tries to step past, but the man slips in front of him once more.

“I shall not tarry while your townsmen deliberate. With each passing minute, another acre disappears into the fiend's gaping maw.” The man raises his shovel like a sword and waves it at the horizon.

“This fire,” Odd says, looking at the man sideways, “it is
utstrakt…
ah, most very large. It is more than one man can do, I think.”

“Then you intend to wait for the others?” the man says. “Well and good. Each man must choose according to his will. I am a man of action, and today I shall act.”

The man taps the handle of the shovel to his forehead and marches off. Odd wonders if he has any idea what he is headed into. He watches the man stride away in the direction of the unfurling ribbon of smoke, the blade of the shovel shining over his shoulder.

The men Odd has come to inform are already gathered at the center of town. There are a hundred or more, as far as Odd can tell. Odd knows most by sight and a few by name. They are arguing quietly, trying to restrain their panic.

“We must stop it before it reaches the town,” someone shouts. “If it comes here, it will go to Boston.”

“We must surround it.”

“Get to its source, strike at its heart.”

“I have shovels enough for all.”

Between each comment, murmurs and nods float through the crowd. Odd knows that he should return to Woburn Farm at once. These men do not need his help, and he feels foolish now for having left Emma unprotected.

“We'll need more axes,” someone yells. “Who'll collect more axes?”

Odd watches the crowd grow denser, pressing inward with the utterance of each new idea. Then he is startled by a voice that materializes an inch from his ear.

“Mr. Hus, what do you expect to accomplish empty-handed?”

Otis Dickerson stands beside him, perched on his toes, holding two rust-spotted axes, one of which he apparently has been
trying to give him. “I've no more shovels. You'll have to content yourself with one of these. Not so dull as they appear.”

Odd takes one of the axes without looking at it, and Mr. Dickerson shakes his head in mild exasperation.

“What were you dreaming about?”

Odd feels his face redden. It is his apology for simply being here. He blushes the way that some men block punches. Odd steps away, but Otis Dickerson places an avuncular hand on his shoulder.

“You ought think only of
what
you are doing
when
you are doing it. Dreaming will get you killed in that fire. I've seen a man swallowed whole in a house fire, and what we're facing is tenfold in size.”

Odd nods. He thinks of Emma and he feels foolish for having left her in danger. He thinks of the usual errands that bring him into Concord, thinks of the simple lists written in her careful script, the beautiful smudges of her thick fingers in the damp ink:
soap, flour, salt, beans
. The thought of living out his days on this narrow path of austere intentions makes his throat constrict with happiness. Then he thinks of what Dickerson has just described to him, and he pictures Emma trapped in the burning farmhouse, waiting for rescue.

“Odd!” Otis Dickerson startles him from his thoughts and seizes his arm behind the elbow. “You had better stay close to me. Do what I do, so you don't get misplaced. You don't want to be caught in the fire alone.”

Odd imagines the size of the fire loose in the woods, and the vision fills him with dread.

“I cannot go into the fire,” Odd blurts out.

“Why have you come if not to help beat down the inferno?”

Odd cannot argue with the man. Why has he come? He has done so for the same reason that he does most things. He is here
because Emma asked it of him. She asked him to come to town to tell the people of Concord what they already knew. He should have realized before leaving that the smoke would have alerted everyone long before he arrived. He should have realized that, once here, it would be impossible for him not to help. These men will rush into the fire, when the sensible thing would be to run away, as far as the ocean if necessary. Odd feels the shiny, scarred flesh on his forearm tighten. He hopes that Emma has sense enough to run before the fire reaches her.

He turns to tell Otis Dickerson that he truly cannot help them, that he is needed back at Woburn Farm, that he will not know what to do when he encounters the fire, that a man who has already been burned is the last man he should want standing beside him when the flames advance. But when Odd turns to plead his case he finds that he has somehow been swept into the midst of the army of volunteers. Otis Dickerson is a half step behind him, pushing him along with a gentle pressure on his elbow. The men have already begun to move, and Odd is moving along with them.

Eliot follows the rising plume of smoke as far as the road out of Concord takes him, and then he turns into the woods. The fire is not here yet, but the smell of the burning is everywhere. Flurries of white ash drift through the untouched trees like snow. If the men do not act soon, he thinks, the fire will certainly fall upon the town. Eliot walks quickly, but the smoke is an elusive guide, shifting direction, coiling and uncoiling above the trees. Eliot pretends he is tracking the slithering tail of a dragon, the kind of mythic beast that the modern world lacks. The great quests have all been undertaken, he thinks, oceans crossed, continents discovered; there are few means left by which a man might prove himself. The untamed expanse of the American continent promises adventures, but not of the kind once embraced by explorers of uncharted seas; the Western territories promise only the opportunity to contribute to the slow, inevitable population of inhospitable land.